June 02, 2016

Mobile Ad Blocking Grew 90% In 2015. Maybe.

An article in The Verge earlier this week reported on a study by PageFair showing that usage of mobile ad blockers grew 90% last year. According to the article there are now over 400 million people worldwide using ad blockers on mobile devices.

Several months ago, PageFair put the number of users at about 200 million worldwide.

They claim that in 2015, online publishers lost over 20 billion dollars in revenue due to ad blocking.

We have no way to know how seriously to take these numbers, but I am officially skeptical.

PageFair's business is helping marketers get around ad blockers. They have a vested interest in a high incidence of blocker usage. I never trust the research of a company that has an interest in an outcome.

The good news for US online publishers is that according to PageFair only 2% of American mobile phone owners use ad blockers on their devices. Of course, like all online ad data this number is completely unreliable.

Just nine months ago, the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) reported that 34% of US adults were using ad blockers. Obviously, one is measuring "mobile phone users" and one is measuring "adults" so there is some room for variance, but nowhere near the difference between 2% and 34%. Someone's either very wrong or full of shit.

As is always the case in online ad-related numbers, games are being played and we are left to try to figure out what the hell is gong on.

For some very plain spoken but highly entertaining and informative comments on the numbers games played by the online ad industry, I highly recommend this talk by the great Prof. Mark Ritson.

Ad Contrarian Says:

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."